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The Game of Thrones star looks great in this Marlowe revival, says Dominic Cavendish, but his delivery is stubbornly earthbound, and the production verges on being totally incomprehensible

Winter has been a long time a-going this year and we’ve had blanket Snow-coverage to contend with too. Speculation about Game of Thrones’ smouldering, seeminly-butchered warrior hero Jon Snow has reached a peak with the onset of Season Six. What better hour for Kit Harington, who has galloped to fame playing the role, to ride into town, bringing a hint of Westeros magic to the West End?

Last time he trod the boards, five years ago at the Royal Court, Harington (now 29) was one fresh face among many in the cast of Laura Wade’s stinging satire on decadent Oxford privilege, Posh. Now he can command an audience in his own right as Faustus, the over-reaching protagonist of Christopher Marlowe’s epic 1594 tragedy of mortal acquisitiveness rewarded with eternal damnation.

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with this sort of star-driven “event” theatre (how neatly apt too that the actor was named after “Kit” Marlowe by his folks). But alas there’s little that’s intrinsically right about Jamie Lloyd’s revival, which has mystifyingly plumped for a modish version byColin Teevan that was borderline forgettable when it premiered in Leeds three years ago and verges on being totally incomprehensible in this dismally conceived rehash.

Teevan’s Big Idea is to ditch Acts Three and Four on the grounds that audiences don’t relate to this less accomplished (and likely not sole-authored) central section in which Faustus pranks the Pope and lords it over the German Emperor. In its stead, the Irish playwright has substituted a modern-day spin that presents the payback for Faustus’s pact with the devil as a money-raking but spiritually empty life as a hell-raising, internationally feted illusionist.

Harington’s own status perhaps adds another level of in-jokeyness or insight to proceedings. As he preens and pouts in front of an imagined mirror and indulges in frenzied bouts of air-guitar, shaking those curly locks of his, fans of Game of Thrones might be forgiven for inferring a sly nod in their direction; here is their celebrity god revealed in the gym-toned flesh, down to his boxers too at the end. They’d be even more forgiven for feeling bamboozled, though.

Kit Harington in Game of Thrones, as the rugged warrior Jon Snow

Even before we’ve got to the hip but slack rewrite, which sees Harington perform a so-so levitation act and includes swipes at bankers, politicians, the US President and all his security men, the emphasis is on de-anchoring the original text from its customary moorings. Lloyd, a director who loves a trick or two, initially presents us with a bespectacled, barefoot chap in a hoodie and jeans, his chief companion the little TV set parked at the end of his bed. The basic ambience, with doors to the side and kitchenette to the rear, is more Willesden Junction than Wittenberg, but otherworldliness is the key-note.

The entourage that cluster round about this doomed meddler in the black arts are like staring apparitions from a low-rent zombie flick – grotty vests and underpants are the order of the day. Faustus’s Good Angel and Bad Angel spew white and black foam. His mates Cornelius and Valdes are starkers at the start like an infernal vision of Adam and Eve. Lloyd goes for broke with gross-out images (excrement is served up like a canapé at one point) and “graphic content” (simulated ravishments) that make this a no-no for school parties.

But the cast are all dressed-down with literally nowhere to go – the action remains trapped in a depressing mise-en-scène. And while he looks impressive, especially when his head leaks black oily slime, Harington’s delivery stays stubbornly earthbound too. He’s competent and clear but hardly a match for Marlowe’s mighty line, lacking sufficient fervour and meaningful interiority.

It says a lot that the most memorable moment of the night comes not with Faustus’s midnight-hour finale but when Jenna Russell’s melancholy Mephistopheles gives a tongue-in-cheek rendition of Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell after the interval. Anyone sensible would have got the hell out before that.